EU leaders agreed on Friday to set an ambitious target to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 55% compared to 1990 levels by 2030...

The new plan will require major overhauls of the energy and transport sectors as well as a huge push to renovate and retrofit buildings to make them energy-efficient and able to charge electric vehicles.

Massive investments will be needed to help those countries with a higher reliance on fossil fuel to manage the transition, EU officials have said...

Poland, backed by other coal-dependent central European countries, had been holding out for guarantees on funding to pay for a clean energy transition. Those states said it was unfair that all member states should commit to the same goal without considering their respective energy dependencies.

To win their approval, member states agreed that the new target should be delivered collectively...

The European Parliament, which itself is pushing for a slightly higher target, still has to approve the Commission's new emissions goal. 

Both targets, however, are lower than those proposed by the UK, which is set to leave the EU's single market and customs union at the end of the month and has vowed that environmental standards will not suffer as a result.